ABSTRACT
This chapter places questions of narrative in dialogue with the mobile socialities framework in order to explore the role that stories play in the healing of individuals and of societies that have been set adrift in relation to mobility. Bringing together Jerome Bruner’s reflections on narrative with Ann Swidler’s concept of cultural anchoring, the chapter introduces the concept of anchoring narratives as aspirational stories that migrants tell that articulate resilience and that open possibilities for imagining different social, political, and economic relationships. By focusing on the narratives created by young migrants in the context of after school programming that integrated digital storytelling techniques and trauma-informed practices, the chapter explores migrant narratives that emphasize resilience, healing, and movement toward positive democratic engagement, highlighting the ways that both those stories, and the stories in which they were shared, are welded together to address precarity and uncertainty. By foregrounding experiences of traumatic mobility and immobility and exploring links between mediated narratives, therapeutic healing, and political agency, the chapter thus carves out a space for a new approach to research at the intersection of media, migration, and intervention.
